Five Odd Honors (2 page)

This second man was as handsome as the green-eyed youth of her dream, but far less real. Brenda couldn’t even remember his name.

The young man with the red-gold hair cupped Brenda’s cheek in one of his musician’s hands. There was an urgency in the brilliant green of his gaze, an urgency Brenda didn’t think was entirely related to the kiss his lips still shaped.

Something was buzzing in her ear.

Brenda shook her head, moving out of reach of that cupping hand. She smelled horses. Sweaty horses. Hay and manure.

What had happened to the stream? Where was the grassy bank? Suddenly, Brenda was sitting upright on a straw bale, the freshly cut straw a brighter gold than the hair of the young man who sat next to her, bolt upright and looking distinctly uncomfortable. A moment ago he’d been wearing . . .

A cap-sleeved tunic? Yes! He’d been dressed like a page or young squire from that book of Arthurian tales her grandmother Elaine had loved to read aloud when Brenda had been too small to read for herself.

Now the young man wore denim coveralls and a short-sleeved, red-plaid cotton shirt. The music in the background blended temple bells and brass chimes incongruously with banjo and fiddle. The green-eyed youth no longer looked as if he were about to kiss Brenda. Now his expression was distinctly annoyed.

A chestnut horse had thrust its head in over the half-open door. Then a man stood there instead, a Chinese man with a full mustache and very short beard. He was wearing ornate armor and a helmet upon which a pair of the longest plumes from a pheasant’s tail were set. These caught a faint breeze, giving the Chinese man an illusion of motion although he stood perfectly still.

Brenda recognized the new arrival at once.

“Loyal Wind! What are you doing here? For that matter, what am I doing here? I was sitting on a stream bank. There was a . . .”

She looked around. The young man with the green eyes had vanished like the dream he had been.

“Why am I in a barn?” Brenda concluded, not really wanting to explain that she’d been sitting on the riverbank with a young man who was not the dark-eyed, black-haired young man whose name she could now remember perfectly.

Flying Claw. His name was Flying Claw.

Loyal Wind chose to answer her last question. “Perhaps you are in a barn, Brenda Morris, because I am the Horse, and where else would you expect to find a horse?”

“In a parking lot,” Brenda muttered.

Loyal Wind looked startled, and Brenda hastened to explain.

“A joke some little kids I knew told over and over. They had just discovered knock-knock jokes, but they didn’t understand the logic behind them . . . Oh, never mind. What’s going on? What are you doing in my dream?”

The barn was gone now. Brenda and Loyal Wind were standing, facing each other on a dry and barren steppe. Cliffs could be seen in the distance, burntorange, barren of all but greyish scrub growth in shadowed crevices.

“I am a bit surprised to find myself in your dream,” Loyal Wind admitted. “I sought to bring a message to one of the Thirteen Orphans. I had thought my desire would connect me to Deborah or Riprap since they were among the Orphans who traveled to the Nine Yellow Springs under my guidance. Still, you took part in that journey as well. The Rat is the sign opposed to the Horse on the wheel. There is a strong attraction between opposites.”

“But I am not the Rat,” Brenda protested. “That’s my dad.”

She caught herself rationalizing aloud.

“I know, I know. Dad didn’t go on that journey, and so maybe that’s the reason you reached me and not him. Maybe the others are both awake. Is it easier for you to contact someone who is asleep?”

“Infinitely,” Loyal Wind said, and Brenda could tell that, for him at least, this explained the anomaly. She made a mental note to find out how late Deborah and Riprap had slept.

But Loyal Wind was speaking.

“I have come to bring the Orphans and their allies news of ill omen. You recall that when last we met, I agreed to journey through the Hells until I found the ghosts of the Thirteen Orphans—especially of those four of whom we had need—then seek to win them to our cause?”

“Yes.” Brenda nodded. “We’ve been wondering how you were doing. Quite a few days have gone by since we parted. We’ve all been recovering, but recently Righteous Drum has started hinting that perhaps we should try some more traditional summons.”

Quite a few days,
Brenda thought.
Well, just five. And I, for one, have been glad for them. What happened at the end of Tiger’s Road . . . I’ve needed time to think, to adjust.

Loyal Wind, however, took Brenda’s comment as a reprimand. He answered with stiff , military exactitude.

“You do realize that the afterlife is vast, far vaster than the worlds of the living, and to locate five spirits—not all of whom recalled me fondly—”

“Yes. Yes,” Brenda cut in. “I’m sorry if I seemed unappreciative. Please, tell me what you learned.”

Loyal Wind seemed appeased, but his words continued to hold the stiff tone of a report from scout to headquarters. “I located Nine Ducks, the Ox, first. I related to her the heroic tales of the dangers undergone in order to link the Nine Gates to the Nine Yellow Springs. This proved sufficient to win her to our cause.”

Brenda remembered that Nine Ducks had been halfway won over already, but nodded understanding and approval.

“Next in order on the wheel is the Snake,” Loyal Wind went on, “but as the Snake is not as greatly needed as the other two, I decided to leave Gentle Smoke for later. Equally, the Ram, my yin counterpart, was likely to be easy to convince—or so I judged, given that in life Copper Gong was fierce in her desire to return to the Lands. Thus, next I went searching for the Monkey.”

“And did he refuse?” Brenda prompted when Loyal Wind fell silent.

“Worse. I could not find Bent Bamboo at all—or rather, when I did, his trail blended with and then ended in that of another of the Exiles, one whom I had not sought.”

“You’re procrastinating,” Brenda said. “Get on with it. I don’t want this dream to end like dreams do in those stupid books where the dreamer gets woken up right before she learns something vital.”

Loyal Wind’s expression became vaguely disapproving, and Brenda remembered that in the strict hierarchy the Horse had been trained in, he would have expected more respect from a junior. Well, if he wanted abject respect, he shouldn’t have come breaking up her dream—especially when she was about to get kissed.

“Where the signs showed me that I should find Bent Bamboo, the Monkey,” Loyal Wind continued, “instead I found Thundering Heaven, who was once the Tiger. Fierce and defiant, Thundering Heaven awaited me before the dark mouth of a sheltered cave. I knew without asking that the Monkey was within, and that unless I fought Thundering Heaven, I could not pass into that place.”

“So you came to report,” Brenda said. “Smart.”

Loyal Wind looked slightly embarrassed. “Actually, I was considering charging forth and challenging Thundering Heaven when I felt Nine Ducks seeking to contact me. Upon hearing her voice, I realized the wisdom in letting someone else know the situation before I confronted the Tiger, for Thundering Heaven manifested—even as did I—as a man in his prime.”

“And Tigers,” said Brenda, who had learned a bit in the almost three months since her world had turned so inside out and upside down that she took having conversations in dreams with ghosts of men who had died more than a hundred years before somewhat for granted, “are the best solo fighters of all the twelve signs, although Horses are the finest battle commanders.”

“Precisely,” Loyal Wind said, obviously mollified regarding her earlier impertinence by this recognition of his prowess. “I discussed what I had learned with Nine Ducks. We resolved that I would come and tell the living of this turn of events, while she would seek out and warn the others among the dead.”

“And my job,” Brenda said, “will be to pass on your news to the others. I wonder what time it is?”

As if in answer, an explosion of raucous rock-and-roll shattered the dream into fragments. Loyal Wind and the stable didn’t so much vanish as never had been. Brenda sat bolt upright in bed.

“Good timing,” she muttered, untangling herself from the sheets and padding barefoot across the room to where the alarm clock was positioned on the farthest edge of the small desk beneath the window.

No more stream bank. No more barn. No more handsome green-eyed squire. No more Chinese ghost. Just the comfortable bedroom in San Jose that was increasingly coming to feel like her own.

Slamming her hand onto the alarm clock’s “off” button, Brenda thought again about that letter she’d wanted to write Shannon. So much had happened since they’d parted at USC that May, promising to stay in touch.

It’s late July now
, Brenda thought, going into the bathroom. She moved a pink plastic pony with a silky nylon mane and tail to the back of the toilet so she could reach her toothbrush.
No. August.

I accept sharing a bathroom with a two-and-a-half-year-old and her mom, whereas at home I’d have my own bathroom, and even in the dorm I only had to share with one other person.

Brenda stripped out of the oversize tee shirt she wore instead of a nightie and adjusted the shower water. There was no noise from the door that led into the other bedroom, but then there wouldn’t be. Nissa Nita and her daughter, Lani, would have risen around six
A.M.
Most of the house hold consisted of early risers, but Brenda (and Deborah, who had a room upstairs) had negotiated to be permitted to sleep until at least eight.

Brenda felt the slight shift in water pressure that told her that Deborah had just turned on a shower upstairs. She hurried to get her long, brown-black hair rinsed. Pearl had put in all new plumbing just the year before, but that didn’t mean the hot water didn’t run out—not in a house hold consisting of four adult women, three adult men, and one child.

Pearl’s carrying us all
, Brenda thought as she turned off the water. She considered her “famous boss” as she toweled off.

Pearl Bright had been a child actress, a contemporary and sometime costar of Shirley Temple. Now silver-haired, her petite form in excellent condition, her face carrying age lines with dignity, Pearl bore little resemblance to the child who sang and danced her way through the old films that were rapidly becoming Lani’s favorites.

However, Pearl Bright was far from a spent “has been.” Her mother had invested Pearl’s earnings well. These days, Pearl managed a modest financial empire and indulged in philanthropy, all the while maintaining very active connections to the entertainment world.

Pearl has me, Riprap, and Nissa on her payroll as interns. I don’t know if she’s paying Des anything. I’m not sure about Deborah. How much longer can Pearl afford to keep employing us? How much longer can any of us continue to interrupt the lives we left behind? Classes will begin soon. I can register online, maybe make excuses for starting the semester late, but eventually I’m going to have to show up in the flesh.

Brenda dressed that flesh in lightweight trousers of off-white natural cotton and a matching sleeveless top embroidered with dark purple irises. Bare feet would be fine for now, especially since Brenda didn’t think she’d be going much of anywhere for a while.

Not with what I’ve got to tell them, but who should I tell?

Brenda’s long hair, wet from the shower, couldn’t be taken care of as casually as the rest of her. Brenda toweled her hair mostly dry, combed out the tangles, then worked a quick, loose braid, tying off the end with a ribbon that matched the irises on her shirt.

All the while, Brenda rehearsed the details of Loyal Wind’s message, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, dreading the reaction to what she must report.

Dreading one reaction more than the rest.

The kitchen
clock was showing eight-thirty when Brenda came downstairs. “Kitchen” was almost a misnomer, for the long room at the back of the house combined kitchen, informal dining area, and family room. This interconnected area was one of the most frequented in the house. Brenda was not disappointed in her expectation that she would find most of her house mates there.

Strawberry blond Nissa Nita, pretty and round-figured—maybe even a bit plump—sat at one end of the table, counting round loops of oat cereal into her daughter’s mouth.

Lani—fair as her mother and sharing the same startling shade of turquoise in her eyes, but too full of energy to be any rounder than a healthy two-and-a-half-year-old should be—was going along with the game, but Brenda knew Lani well enough to know that the little girl’s cooperation wouldn’t last much longer. Sometimes it seemed to Brenda that Lani survived on air and sunlight rather than normal caloric intake.

Down the table a few seats, the newspaper’s baseball statistics folded neatly in front of him, sat a member of the house hold whom no one would ever imagine subsisted on sunlight.

Charles Adolphus—never called anything but Riprap—was a big black man who, before the affairs of the Thirteen Orphans had drawn him from his life in Denver, Colorado, had worked as a bouncer nights and a coach by day. Somewhere in there he must have slept, but Brenda wasn’t sure when. He certainly didn’t seem to sleep much now.